Elephants Can Remember - Agatha Christie [28]
‘Oh yes. He had two revolvers in the house. These ex-military people so often do, don’t they? I mean, they feel safer what with everything that goes on nowadays. A second revolver was still in the drawer in the house, so that he – well, he must have gone out deliberately with the revolver, presumably. I don’t think it likely that she’d have gone out for a walk carrying a revolver.’
‘No. No, it wouldn’t have been so easy, would it?’
‘But there was nothing apparently in the evidence to show that there was any unhappiness or that there’d been any quarrel between them or that there was any reason why they should commit suicide. Of course one never knows what sad things there are in people’s lives.’
‘No, no,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘One never knows. How very true that is, Julia. Did you have any idea yourself ?’
‘Well, one always wonders, my dear.’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘one always wonders.’
‘It might be of course, you see, that he had some disease. I think he might have been told he was going to die of cancer, but that wasn’t so, according to the medical evidence. He was quite healthy. I mean, he had – I think he had had a – what do they call those things? – coronary, is that what I mean? It sounds like a crown, doesn’t it, but it’s really a heart attack, isn’t it? He’d had that but he’d recovered from it, and she was, well, she was very nervy. She was neurotic always.’
‘Yes, I seem to remember that,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Of course I didn’t know them well, but –’ she askedsuddenly – ‘was she wearing a wig?’
‘Oh. Well, you know, I can’t really remember that. She always wore her wig. One of them, I mean.’
‘I just wondered,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Somehow I feel if you were going to shoot yourself or even shoot your husband, I don’t think you’d wear your wig, do you?’
The ladies discussed this point with some interest.
‘What do you really think, Julia?’
‘Well, as I said, dear, one wonders, you know. There were things said, but then there always are.’
‘About him or her?’
‘Well, they said that there was a young woman, you know. Yes, I think she did some secretarial work for him. He was writing his memoirs of his career abroad – I believe commissioned by a publisher at that – and she used to take dictation from him. But some people said – well, you know what they do say sometimes, that perhaps he had got – er – tied up with this girl in some way. She wasn’t very young. She was over thirty, and not very good-looking and I don’t think – there were no scandals about her or anything, but still, one doesn’t know. People thought he might have shot his wife because he wanted to – well, he might have wanted to marry her, yes. But I don’t really think people said that sort of thing and I never believed it.’
‘What did you think?’
‘Well, of course I wondered a little about her.’
‘You mean that a man was mentioned?’
‘I believe there was something out in Malaya. Some kind of story I heard about her. That she got embroiled with some young man much younger than herself. And her husband hadn’t liked it much and it had caused a bit of scandal. I forget where. But anyway, that was a long time ago and I don’t think anything ever came of it.’
‘You don’t think there was any talk nearer home? No special relationship with anyone in the neighbourhood? There wasn’t any evidence of quarrels between them, or anything of that kind?’
‘No, I don’t think so. Of course I read everything about it at the time. One did discuss it, of course, because one couldn’t help feeling there might be some – well, some really very tragic love story connected with it.’
‘But there wasn’t, you think? They had children, didn’t they. There was my goddaughter, of course.’
‘Oh yes, and there was a son. I think he was quite young. At school somewhere. The girl was only twelve, no – older than that. She was with a family in Switzerland.’
‘There was no – no mental trouble, I suppose, in the family?’
‘Oh, you mean the boy – yes, might be of course. You do hear very strange things. There was that boy who shot his father – that was somewhere near Newcastle, I think. Some